At system boot-up, a validation of the sanctity of the system's basic input output system (BIOS) or another initialization module may be performed. If a security breach is detected, the boot-up may be halted or the system rebooted. One validation technique involves the use of a Trusted Platform module (TPM), which relies on data at a boot block-based core root of trust for measurement (CRTM) portion of the BIOS for validation of the BIOS. Because the domain under measurement is also performing the measurement, this technique and similar techniques may suffer from Heisenburg's Uncertainty Principle.
Current validation methods also suffer in recovering from errors. If the CRTM is in fact inviolate but has detected a security compromise in the main firmware, the BIOS is traditionally unable to recover alone from the security compromise. The firmware would need to be updated/corrected from a source external to the BIOS, which traditionally cannot be accessed due to the fact that the compromised BIOS will not be executed to allow access to error correction. Furthermore, traditional systems do not provide notification to an administrative entity of the security breach.